Consider the (elliptic) stationary nonlinear reaction–diffusion equation in a sequence of bounded Neumann tubes in a space that is squeezed to a reference curve. It is supposed that the forcing term is square integrable and that the nonlinear one satisfies some growth and dissipative conditions. A norm convergence of the resolvents of the operators associated with the linear terms of such equations is proven, and this fact is used to provide new and simpler proofs of the asymptotic behaviour of the solutions to the full nonlinear equations (previously known in similar singular problems).